Organisational Politics

Is Organization politics bad?

Whenever we hear the word politics - negative thoughts come up in almost everyone's mind. Politics becomes bad when there is hidden agenda, using power and influence to further your personal interests, maligning your colleagues etc. Following are examples of bad politics

• Regional/language bias Well, let's accept this. We have a comfort feel if we have people from your region or who speak your language. Assume there are 2 people who have more or less the same competence. The person who is from the same region as the boss gets visibility, rewards, recognitions etc. Boss does the image building for this person and ignores the other person completely. So you could imagine the emotional state of other guy. Such issues could happen between peers at all levels.
• Perception spreading/Image tarnishing Let's assume that an influential person has some perception about somebody or some thing. This person spreads his/her perception to other people. This could be done intentionally or unintentionally. But the damage it does is profound. If it is about a person, the person's career is jeopardized or if it is about the project, the project is bound to fail or people involved in that project will get de-motivated or even resign.
• Hiding important information This point is self explanatory. Hiding important information which is required to do your work is most negative thing I can think of. The person hiding the information wants the other person to fail desperately for whatever reason.
• Misrepresentation of information In order to protect one's image, the facts are misrepresented so that someone else's image is tarnished. Most of the times this person will not be present to defend himself/herself and gets to know only after his/her image is tarnished. In order to change this, the person will have to work hard for quite sometime. Very often it will be difficult to re-establish the good image depending on how influential the person is.

Is Organization politics good?

What is politics? In my experience it includes gossiping, networking etc. Every organization will have grape vine for rumors, gossips, speculation etc. Following are examples of good politics

• Networking/friends The backbone of office politics is networking. Without network of colleagues there cannot be politics. Once you start networking with your colleagues you will get to know more about your colleagues, their interests, the projects they are working on, the problems they face etc. This has multiple benefits. You know where other projects are positioned; you get information needed for doing your job in a better way, or advancing your career, getting that etc. You will get to know the pulse of your organization by getting to know what is happening within the organization. Most of the time you never get important information from your bosses but from your network and you could prepare yourself for any eventuality. This is most important source of information.
• Speculation For any controversial topic within organization, there will be speculation. Groups of people speculate on what will be the outcome of this topic and you get various insights into the topic. If it is about who will be next CEO or General Manager, you will get to know who the competent people in the company are. These kinds of speculation open up various possibilities and also offer insight into how your colleague's thought process works and more importantly it provides invaluable insight into their emotional setup. The speculation could be started by involved parties also, so as to direct the actual outcome to be what they expect it to be. I have seen this working.
• Career development Little bit of politics will also help you to make advancements in career. You will get important information via networking/speculation regarding opportunities and new job openings. With this information you could position yourself based on your goals and contact the right person with right set of information. As and when you grow higher in hierarchy, the person has to be part of office politics to even retain his/her position or to grow further.

Summary
Most of what is discussed above is somewhat abstract, but this is what I have seen in many organizations that I worked for. To summarize, every organization will have politics and you should become part of it even if you like or dislike if you want career growth. Also one should cultivate good friendship and trust with at least some of your colleagues.On the other hand, senior leadership team should ensure that negative politics is not encouraged. It could bring down the organization itself.

Barack Obama says American Alcohoilism is the Cause of Iraq War

According to Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, American Alcohoilism is the root cause of the Iraq War, soon to be the Iran War. The immense, gluttonous, ridiculous over consumption of oil by the people of the United States of America is the root cause of the Iraq War said Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

At the time that America went to war in Iraq Senator Barack Obama was a state legislator. He opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning unlike all of the other leading candidates from both parties who voted to go to war in Iraq proving that the color of your skin and long years of experience do not always translate into good foresight and wisdom. Yesterday Barack Obama addressed the DNC Winter Meeting. Here is a part of what Barack Obama said:

“We’ve got 130,000 Americans fighting halfway across the world in a war that should never have been waged, led by leaders who have no plan to end it. The decisions that we make in the next decade will determine the future of our children and the future of our grandchildren. The campaign, our mission is to figure out how we can do some good for this precious country and planet of ours. Our oil dependence is threatening not just our pocketbooks but the safety of our planet.”

Barack Obama blasted President Bush’s new war escalation and budget which asks for the American people to throw another trillion dollars after bad for the war in Iraq. This warmongering by George Bush is bankrupting health care, social security, education and creating a deficit which will lead to the bankruptcy of the country, leading to another great depression or runaway inflation.

The root cause of the Iraq War and the American dependence on other countries for oil is not a lack of domestic oil but an insane over consumption of oil by the people of the United States. This graph is worth a billion words and shows in one glance the amount of oil used every day by every country on the planet earth. Look at it, click on it NOW to understand the root cause of the Iraq War. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption

The people of the United States of America consume 20 million barrels of oil each and every day, far in excess of any other nation on Earth. For the past 5 million years before a hundred years ago our ancestors used zero oil. Russia and India use 2 million barrels of oil per day. Indonesia with nearly the same population as the U.S. uses 1 million barrels of oil per day. Laos and many other countries use 3 thousand barrels of oil per day.

Now look at this chart of exports and production of oil by every country on Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chart_of_exports_and_production_of_oil_by_nation This chart shows that Saudi Arabia exports 9 million barrels of oil more per day than it imports. On the other end of the scale the United States the world’s largest polluter by far imports 12 million barrels of oil per day on top of the 5 million barrels per day we produce domestically in the United States. The Iraq desert is capable of producing 2 million barrels of oil per day at a cost of $1 per barrel and this is why the United States invaded Iraq, to steal their oil. Every one of the 1.3 billion Muslim people on Earth knows this. The Iraq War and Iran War exit strategy is for the people of the United States of America to over the next year cut back on our ridiculous over consumption of oil to 2 million barrels of oil per day.

Russia and China consider Iran to be their own backyard. They are both going to back Iran just like they backed tiny North Vietnam to defeat the United States, when the United States attacks Iran. Russia and Iran have half of the world’s oil and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin just announced their own gas OPEC. Russia, the Soviet Union, the long time enemy of the United States is building the Iranian nuclear reactor in Busheher Iran and the Soviet Union just delivered $1 billion worth of advanced surface to air missiles to Iran to protect it.

Yesterday Senator Barack Obama said, “Our oil dependence is threatening not just our pocketbooks but the safety of the planet.” The American dependence upon foreign oil because of our ridiculous over consumption of oil every day caused the Iraq War, is leading to the Iran War and then to nuclear world war 3, the extinction of life one earth in nuclear world war 3 and its aftermath nuclear winter then ultraviolet summer aka Mad, Mutually Assured Destruction. Furthermore the burning by the United States every day of 20 million barrels of oil, the American Alcohoilism is a leading cause of the impending global warming catastrophe when Antarctica, Greenland and the Arctic ice continents melt and the earth’s one Ocean rises permanently 50 feet, permanently submerging the United States under 50 feet of water. The United States is like a codeine addict thinking that the solution to his problems is to break into a drug store and steal the pills.

The real solution to our war and global warming problems is to eliminate our consumption of oil completely. Our ancestors did fine without it for five million years. Why are SUV’s legal? Why isn’t it a law that every American must drive a Smart Car or an electric car or an ethanol car which runs on corn or a fuel cell car which runs on water and emits only water vapor or ride a bicycle? Think of the reduction in oil consumption. Think of the end of the need to colonize the Middle East. Ford Motors is now approaching bankruptcy and Japanese Toyota just reported record sales and profit because of the difference in their cars’ gas mileage. Isn’t it about time that we as American people took the fifth step at Alcohoilics Anonymous and admitted to God, to ourselves and to everyone else the exact nature of our wrongs, that we drank too much oil, and isn’t it about time that we as Americans stopped needlessly drinking so much oil? Our very existence and the continued existence of life on Earth depends upon it said Senator Barack Obama yesterday. It’s just plain common sense. We know how much war costs in dollars and lives lost. How much money will peace save the American taxpayers, who are being taxed out of their minds by the hidden George Bush War Tax, which just went up another trillion dollars yesterday?

LSM Threatens Attack If SBY Ignore Palace Team 8

VIVAnews - A number of activists from various non-governmental organizations will hold a signature delivery action to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a form of support to follow up recommendations Eight team.

They would go around the Presidential Palace at 09.00 am, Monday, November 23, 2009. "We'll leave to the SBY thousands of signatures of support," said Director Ray Rangkuti Circle Madani, when contacted VIVAnews, Sunday evening, November 22, 2009.

Action is a form of support to the president for a recommendation from Tim menindaklajuti Verification Process Facts and Case Law Samad Riyanto Seeds and Chandra M Hamzah. "The attitude of the president to implement the recommendations that are awaited by the people," he said.

The President asked to implement all the recommended points Eight team. It shows decisiveness by the president to establish the rule of law. "Although the president was assessed attitudes slow in this case, but we hope there is a decisive action to solve it thoroughly," he said.

Action will continue to watch with my persiden answers on recommendation 8 in the Office team Imparsial, road Diponogoro, Menteng, Central Jakarta. President dijadwalka submit the answers on Monday night, 23 November 2009. "If the attitude of the president to ignore the recommendations Eight team, we'll do big action to the Palace," he said.

The activists who participate will melt in Indonesian Youth flag. They include Usman Hamid, Fadli Zon, director of Circle Madani (Lima), Ray Rangkuti; Muhamdiyah Youth Chairman, M Izzul Muslims; Secretary General of the Muslim Students Association, Ahmad Nasir; and Haris Rusly of Indonesian Youth Leadership Forum (FKPI).

In recommendation 31 yard thick, the team president of Eight request to stop the seed case and Chandra, completing Kabareskrim legal cases related Duadji Inspector Susno Century Bank case, repositioning of personnel in the conduct of law enforcement institutions, and the eradication of the body broker in the case of law enforcement institutions.

Terrorism: How to End it

As human beings we have grown accustomed to dealing with problems too late. In fact we don’t even label things as “problems” until they become problematic enough to affect our lives negatively. A broken headlight is not a “problem” until it gets dark at night. A neglected child is not problematic until he commits his first crime or turns to drugs. An imbalance of national wealth is not a “problem” until very poor people steal your money so they can eat. In other words, we have become used to procrastinating and letting problematic situations build up. If you think about it, everything we label as a “problem” is not even the problem. They are all the consequences of those problems. A neglected child is the problem- not his drug abuse. An imbalance of wealth is the problem- not the crime on the streets.

Oddly enough we have decided that the best way to deal with problems is to deal with its consequences. A neglected child turning to drugs faces punishment for using drugs, but he’s still neglected. A poor man who steals a car faces jail time for his crime, but he’s still poor. What we are doing is not dealing with the root of any problem we face, but yet we pretend not only to understand it, but also to solve it. This is like cutting your grass really really short every week so the weeds stop coming back. You haven’t even tried to dig up the roots. We must stop dealing with the consequences of problems and begin by understanding the problems themselves. That is, of course, if we decide we want long-term solutions to problems and not just temporary fixes.

Now what does this have to do with Terrorism? After all, you are reading this because you wanted to know “How to End Terrorism” right? Well let’s say you are driving down the freeway and your car runs out of gas. You wouldn’t label this a “car problem” or a “driving problem” now would you? You needed gas, but yet you denied your precious machine the fuel that flows through its veins. How could you? Running out of gas was the consequence of your neglect (or cruelty, if you ask me). Now it’s too little too late, because you are already late for work. This, my friends, was a preventable situation. Terrorism too, is a preventable situation. When 9-11 happened I thought it would become a call to world education. I thought it would become a “hey look at your gas meter!” type of call for the US.

Unfortunately this call did not happen. We decided instead that understanding the problem was going to require too much effort and opted to go ahead and solve it. We opted to solve the problem we didn’t understand. Attack Revenge Attack. Who are the terrorists? Why did they do this? …who knows. In the few years that have followed those events we have been bombarded with assumptions and misconceptions regarding what “they” think. The 2-second attention span of the average US citizen can only hold the notion that “They hate us”. Why? How? For how long? Who knows. I tell you now that what drives this conflict, and every other one on this planet for that matter, is a subject Americans have learned to be very touchy about. That subject is belief. Belief is the gas that fuels this fire. It has political consequences, economic consequences, and causes war. We have to deal with belief to prevent its destructive consequences. We cannot solve a belief problem economically. We cannot solve a belief problem politically. We absolutely will NOT solve a belief problem through war.

Now before you throw your hands up in the air and say “How can we possibly deal with the beliefs of the entire world??” I tell you this: the United States of America is a place that now holds millions of people coexisting with other people of completely different backgrounds and beliefs. As a planet we now have a technology that connects the whole world in a way never before possible. Look around you skeptic, everything you see was at some point in history “impossible”. Let’s not make the foolish mistake of thinking that a united world is impossible. “Hard”-maybe, “Complicated”-maybe, but impossible? No. Are we so immature a species that we have yet learned to coexist peacefully as a planet? We have already done so as separate groups (nations). This shows some maturity. The US, being the most economically powerful country in the world (and this does not make us smart so please let’s get off our high horse), should be setting the example of peaceful life and economic structure. How do we expect other nations or groups to implement our way of life when they see us as moronic and ignorant. (Go watch the fine example of American life we sent to the world with the movie “Jackass”). How do we expect other nations to support our way of life when we constantly bully and economically strong arm countries into doing what we want. I thought 9-11 would shed light on all of this. I thought 9-11 would burst the “bubble” that Americans live in. I thought people would say “oh my god, MY country is supporting dictators? I had no idea”. I believe that information is what is going to give way to a better understanding of the problem (remember the problem is Belief).

If we keep treating the consequences of the problems, we will be trapped in a never-ending cycle that won’t bring us any closer to peace. War will go on and on (sound familiar?), because war is the result of the problem and not the problem itself. In the words of john Lennon “Imagine there are no countries, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us, and the world can live as one”.

Asia-Pacific Leaders Meet Obama

Singapore, Saturday - Despite arriving late from Japan, the United States President Barack Obama, Saturday (14/11) night, come join the banquet, wearing colorful clothes specially designed for guests 21 leaders of member Economic Cooperation Forum Asia Pacific or APEC.

On the other leaders brought driving to the Esplanade arts building with a rickshaw, a kind dikayuh old pedicab man with hat (cap) wide.

Many VIP guests, including Prime Minister (PM) Abhisit Vejjajiva Thailand and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, smiled broadly when he was brought driving slowly.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet was talking warmly through a cell phone while driving a rickshaw carried by many people.

As with tradition at the annual APEC summit, the leaders of Asia-Pacific countries are asked to wear these clothes host culture results, this time designed Singapore's leading designer, Wykidd Song.

The leaders of men wearing long-sleeved linen shirt with mandarin collar, with mixture of China, Malays, and Indians-cultures exist in Singapore.

Obama highlighted

Started his visit to Asia this time, U.S. President Barack Obama chose Japan as the first speech.

There is a possibility, according to some observers, Obama will be highlighted in relation to economic policies which tend to be protectionist.

"President Obama likely to face political opposition as against the (current) free trade," said Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Singapore. This commentary expressed doubts related to Obama's government to fully implement the Treaty of NFTA for North America.

"The paradox is cruel in the global economy that what killed the companies was the inefficiency and lack of competition. Thus, protectionism that killed the companies in North America, "he said.

According to Calderon, not only the U.S. Government (acting tends to protectionist). In fact, the U.S. Congress is also likely not in line with the free market, especially after the U.S. worst hit by the economic crisis after World War II.

Meanwhile, world leaders, including Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, in Singapore warned that protectionism could hinder economic recovery from exposure to the crisis.

However, there is also a bit of relief when in Japan the day before Obama said that the U.S. will establish partnerships with countries Trans-Pacific (TPP). TPP trade zone includes the U.S., Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. Australia, Peru, and Vietnam joined rumored to be following.

Iranian President Statements to Blow Israel Off the Map

Some have defended the Iranian President as he makes statements to Blow Israel off the Map. They say that the Iranian President did not make the statement into the World Media, but rather to a student group in a speech. This issue is a hot political topic and it is being debated in political forums and in the media in the United States. One debater in defense of the Iranian President stated;

“How about understanding that the statement the Iranian president made was not "TO" Israel but was sabre-rattling off-the-cuff talk to a group of students.”

If the President of Iran uses rhetoric to recruit people into the army so they will be used in the future to die, then he needs to be removed from power. Otherwise all those students will run into battle and die, just like the 250,000 soldiers in Gulf War I and the 100,000 in Gulf War II. Also it sends the wrong message to the next generation of leaders and means that war is likely for years to come. The debater had no answer and switched blaming President Bush for the Iranian President’s outbursts;

“This was AFTER threats were made to his country by the Bush administration. He has never repeated it officially, unlike Bush who publicly and on T.V to millions of people threatened Iran with Nuclear first strikes.”

Mr. President Bush did not threaten, he simply promised that the United States of America “WILL NOT” allow the current fanatical, radical regime in Iran to have nuclear weapons. I suppose this is wise considering they support International Terrorism, fund Hezbollah and Hamas, that the CIA knows the President of Iran was involved decades the prior in kidnapping American Hostages.

Not to mention the fact that the Iranians are sending in insurgents into Iraq to disrupt the new government and kill American Troops. Therefore President Bush is correct and that was no THREAT. That was merely drawing the line, well in advance so their would be no misunderstanding if that line is crossed. Our President does not make threats; he simply tells it like it is. And really that is the way it is; isn’t it? Consider this in 2006.